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The importance of targeting customers on mobile devices is becoming imperative and now a well-established fact. It is not just about reaching out to customers, but reaching out to maximum users across the globe. Progressive web apps development services helps enterprises with strategic goals such as increasing user base and provides enhanced user experience combining the best of both worlds; web and mobile apps. PWAs give users the flexibility of the web with robust experience of a native application. It extends a step ahead where users can build PWA for mobile and make app available on all devices. In order to gain maximum advantage, it is important to partner with a trusted Progressive Web App Development company.
Rise of Progressive Web Apps Development
Because PWAs don’t need approval or launch on app stores, they help overcome the problem of app fatigue, where users often resist searching through hundreds and thousands of apps on the store to find yet another app. If you are lucky, users might download your app. However, chances are that they might try once and forget about the app. On the other hand, with PWA users visit your site, you can offer the PWA installation, and launch it from that site with every visit. It’s not surprising because PWA has made the dream of installing web apps on phone for real.
PWA starts as a web page in a browser and as a user explores the webpage, they receive the prompt to “Add to Home Screen”. Once the user accepts prompt, PWA gets added to their home screen. Once open from the home screen, it can even hide the browser UI controls and appear as an app.
Several large enterprises have adopted Progressive Web Applications Development services and various test cases have proved that PWAs dramatically improve engagement, conversions, interaction, open rates for push notifications and opt-in. PWA totally eliminates the steps between discovery of an app and getting it on the home screen and eliminates friction of getting an app installed.
This is a very lucrative way for businesses to pitch in their PWA.
Everything you want to know about Progressive Web Apps
Though PWAs are still in nascent stage. However, nearly 93% of respondents in a recent Gartner Survey (paywall) indicated that they planned to deploy or develop PWAs by the end of 2020. And Google, Apple and Microsoft are supporting PWAs on their browsers. Microsoft took a big leap early last year when it announced support for Progressive Web Apps on Windows – they’re already indexing PWA on the open web and adding it to the Microsoft Store.
Microsoft has started to take steps in the right direction to ensure that PWA supports Windows 10 and Edge browser stories with the launch of PWA Builder. Specifically designed to turn websites into apps, PWA Builder is a strategic move.
Recently, the second iteration of PWA Builder has a new design, new “snippits” for integrating web programming interfaces and more. Microsoft has hit the 2.0 milestone with its Progressive Web App (PWA) Builder tool.
Features of Newly Launched PWA Builder 2.0
PWA 2.0 went live with version 1.9, including inclusion of a Mac desktop platform driven by Webkit; Webhint integration; and more service worker options. It also provides developers with “PWA Builder Score” on the hub page with the hope of encouraging them to add more components to their sites.
With PWA Builder 2.0, the aim is now towards pushing developers to transcend beyond just a manifest and service worker. They also can add cross-platform features such as authentication, system integrations and native-like UIs via Microsoft Graph programming interfaces.
Progressive Web Apps Tools for Microsoft
Progressive Web Apps Builder
PWA builder lets you package existing app and scan website to create a full manifest, manage image sizing, and track specs to ensure you are developing the most up-to-date manifests and Service Workers.
Sonarwhal
Sonarwhal is a fully customizable open source linting tool and site scanner to check accessibility of web apps, PWA components, interoperability, performance, security and help you stay updated with evolving web standards.
Debugging PWAs with Microsoft Edge
The Edge DevTools provide inspection and debugging support for essential PWA technologies, including Service Worker, Cache API, and IndexedDB.
VS Code Extension
This Visual Studio Code extension adds snippets and JSON schema for a manifest.json to build robust Progressive Web Apps (PWA).
Key Benefits of Progressive Web Application
Cross-platform
PWAs offer support and work everywhere, regardless of the fact whether users are on a Surface Book, Android smart phone, iPad, or Xbox One. All of the major browsers support the Service Worker API that enables PWAs to look and feel like native apps.
Feature-rich
Control device features (such as the camera, microphone, and GPS), access user resources (such as the calendar, contacts, documents, and music), launch and navigate your app with Cortana voice commands, and integrate with the Windows OS (the notification center, desktop taskbar, and context menus) all while protected by Windows security.
Discoverable
PWAs can be discovered by search engine on the web or via the Microsoft Store with access to the entire Windows 10 install base with 600 million active monthly users. With a PWA, users are likely to re-engage via notifications or by sharing a URL.
Google and Apple’s Support for PWAs
PWAs offer the look and feel of a native iOS or Android app and they work on desktops. PWAs enable push notifications, progressive caching and the ability to work offline — all without requiring the need to download app from the store. Google is following closely on the same path with the Play Store by late 2019. iOS added support for PWAs to Safari updates. However, it comes with certain limitations. With major OS supporting PWAs it means that you can now make progressive web apps and ship to multiple platforms such as Android, Chrome OS, iOS and Windows.
Finally
With the evolution of the web, plus several updates coming from Google, Apple and Microsoft, it’s likely we’ll see it become even easier to implement PWAs both within and outside app stores.
